Marrin's Bookshop

Synopsis

The story of the loneliest woman in africa.

Item Description

8vo. 7.5x 5.25 inches. xiii +236 pp. + 4 pp. publisher's advertisements. Bound in original grey cloth, gilt. A little wear to extremities and small stains on rear boards; otherwise a very good clean copy. Sunday school prize label, 1920-21, on front pastedown. Illustrated by 9 plates, including portrait frontispiece and by map. Account of the work of the Scottish missionary, Christina Forsyth, nee Moir, (1844-1919) in Fingoland, Cape Province, South Africa. From the 1880s she lived for thirty years among the Mfengu people in the remote Xolobe valley, described pejoratively in the introduction as 'a wild and dissolute tribe of heathens.' This was the view of the author, who has also been criticised for over emphasising her isolation as expressed in the title. Apparently Mrs Forsyth refused to co-operate with William Pringle Livingstone (1864-1950), Scottish journalist, who worked as an editor for the Church of Scotland. A Sunday school prize copy. (Dictionary of African Christian Biography and William Pringle Livingstone - Lives of my ancestors, websites).